Schreiber Bb Cornet

Louis Schreiber, emigrated to the US from Germany in the 1850s, having already established himself an excellent cornet soloist.  By 1861, Fiske was offering a Schreiber model 4 rotary valve cornet and several New York firms made copies of this.  

It was nothing like the cornets that Herr Schreiber was to design in the late 1860s, all of which have these unique side action valve levers and an additional rotary valve with reservoir to let out the water.  Even more striking than these features was the shape of the curved tubing.  In this case the main tubing forms a figure "8" but he was even more famous for producing a unique family of brass instruments with the bell over the shoulder as seen in another Bb cornet on this site.  His designs were patented between 1865 and 1867 and he would have been manufacturing instruments of all sizes from Eb cornet to Eb tuba by that time.  His factory was short lived and seems to have stopped operations by the early 1870s.  

One of Schreiber’s patents is for a method of making rotary valve casing assembly, including the knuckles (tubes leading in and out), from a single brass casting. It specifies the design for a machine that drills out the final bore of the knuckles, eliminating the need to silver solder separate tubes (4 for each assembly). This seems like an unlikely construction, but all but the earliest prototype have valve casings made with this method.

This cornet is 10 3/4" long with the shank removed with bell diameter of 4 3/4".  The valve bore diameter is .459".  The Bb shank is a replacement.